Film Noir
by Desdemona Kakalose
Summary: Of all the offices in all the Tristate Area, he walks into mine. Perryshmirtz, a human noir au.
1. Pleuvoir

Written for pony-macaroni on tumblr, who asked for a noir au with terrible femme fatale Doof. Also I was asked for POC Perry- it wasn't specified, but I'm thinking Maori.

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When the rain comes down in this city it comes down like it's not sure it wants to commit, bouncing off the streets and rolling on towards whatever promises gravity offers, unsatisfied with the ground it hits. It's a rain that knows what rain is supposed to do, but not what comes after. I can relate.

It's two minutes to seven on a Tuesday, closing time, when the door to my office creaks open. Outside my window the streetlights are coming on, lighting up the wet pavement like a surgeon's table. I look up from my half-opened envelope to find him in the doorway, nervous, with a slouch that tells me he doesn't feel right standing here, or maybe anywhere. In his tailored suit with the hand-patched pockets, he looks like trouble. That's fine, because trouble is my business.

"You're Perry?" he asks, with his hand on the black _P_ painted over my glass door.

German, I note, or something like it. It's a hard life for a German these days on cold American cement. I can sympathize. People get a look at my coloring and they draw conclusions like an unsupervised toddler on whitewash.

"I'm looking for a private detective," he says. "They say you're the best," he says.

They probably do. I only take the worst cases, the pick of the illegitimate litter. The other detectives with OWCA Incorporated can handle the missing rings and lost dogs of the world, but when the real twisted ones hang their coats on the rack, Monogram sends them down the hall to see me. I'm proud of my record. I never come back empty handed.

He flows into my room like the kind of river that bodies don't float in, like slick trouble, but when he tries to rest a hand on my bookshelf the whole thing goes out from under him and it pretty much spoils the effect. I set my letter aside and come round the desk to offer him a hand up. He's middle aged, with features as sharp and striking as a double headed axe. I wonder if he's married. I tell myself not to wonder about that. He takes my hand gratefully, with long fingers and an iron vice grip. I wonder again about his marital state.

"Thanks," he says, completely shed of the peculiar slithering grace from before. "I'm—sorry, that wasn't a very good first impression."

On his left hand there is a glove, the knuckles of it bulging strangely, and I am looking for a wedding ring but I am also a detective. I notice when things aren't quite right. He catches me looking, and he produces a smile with the same success that a buzz saw produces a melody.

"Uh," he says. He peels back the bottom of the glove to reveal the glint and whirl of metal pieces. "1918," he says, like an apology, "I was only on the field for a month before the armistice but, boy, war can really pack it in for a guy. Would you believe it happened while they had me out there as a translator? But that's a tragic back-story for another day."

This man, I begin to suspect, is going to take up a lot more than two minutes of my time.

"I'm here because—well I work at this club, on week nights, and I—that's, uh, that is _we—"_

I hold up a hand. Some clients need more patience than I usually have to spare, but this one makes me think of the blink and flare of cinema, the frantic ticking of film feeding into a projector. I like it. I gesture for him to sit down in the chair across from the desk.

"The word is," he says, "your organization is where most of the mob arrests happen. I mean, we all know the cops won't so much as spit in the Don's coffee while Roger is Mayor. But you guys, you're really a, a thorn in the… hey, is mob a plural noun or a collective noun?"

I hold up two fingers.

"Collective, right," he says. "You don't talk much, do you? Is it a hardboiled thing? Do you have a wordcount limit?"

I'm surprised Monogram didn't warn him. But then, it's seven now. Monogram likes to get home to his dinner a little too early, in my opinion, although I'm sure his wife appreciates it. I press fingers to my throat and shake my head.

"Oh," he says, "you can't? What was it, the war? You look young enough for the last one."

I nod. That was easier than expected. With most clients I usually have to resort to scribbling on notepads, which don't come cheap. This client isn't most clients, though. I'm certain of it now.

He reminds me, in a vague way, of my nephew. Even now the envelope on my desk wants me to pick it up and finish opening it, but I already know what it will say. The boys want me to come visit. We live in the same city. They think it should be easy. But there's so much work to be done, and I'm the one who does it because when you work hard they thank you with more work. And even if I could leave, I've been lying with dogs. Who knows what kind of fleas I'm carrying, at this point. It's a dangerous business.

"Anyways," he carries on, "we have this big ugly mobster snooting around the place lately, looking for protection money, harassing the help, you know. Mobster stuff. I guess most places just pony up the cash to bribe them off but we're… uh, the rent goes up like every month because the landlord kind of… wants us out… So I thought maybe you could dig something up to get him off our backs?"

I don't like blackmail. On principal, I don't like the muckraking for moral failure. I feel like I always come back home tracking mud. But the fact of the matter is that the jails in this town are held together with candy floss and the district attorney's shoestrings, and blackmail does what handcuffs wish they could.

I give this man another hard once-over. His story feels thin. There's something he's not telling me. If it were a decade ago I'd say there was alcohol involved, but they rolled up prohibition a long time ago and the tristate area isn't in a dry county. It's something else. I'd be smart to turn him down right now and get home to the rest of my unopened mail. The reason I don't… the reason is something to do with his intricate false hand and his hand-patched pockets, and the way he toppled right over the moment he tried to play it cool against my book shelf.

I take a business card from my pocket and offer it to him, leaving my other hand open to receive one of his. He fumbles in his wallet, which is peeling strips of leather like a busy tanner's work room, and trades me.

 _Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz_ , the card says, _inventor, part time entertainer_. The address of his club is listed under _evening hours_.

I'll take the case, but I don't walk into anything blindly.

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The rain comes down thin that evening, thinner than a cheating husband's excuses, while I find the club in question at the far end of my side of town, buried between a couple similar establishments. In the drizzle their neon sign sizzles like the cherry of a cigarette, hot and pale red against the darkness. This is my side of town, in the sense that no one looks twice at my skin when I'm out in the street, but I don't actually get out and around much. I can't recall ever seeing the place before.

The man at the door takes a hard look at me, but I flash him Heinz's card and it seems to do the trick. There's definitely something here that's not quite right. Hole-in-the-wall week night clubs don't have doormen on duty. The guiding hand of the carpet takes me in past an old fashioned bar and into the dim smoky heart of the place, tables and chairs populated thinly with what I can only assume are the true regulars, the kind who come out on a Tuesday night for a gin and tonic. And for the show? Beyond the chairs there is the stage, and on the stage a pair of heels, and in those heels, there is Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz. I recognize him in a heartbeat.

The dress he's wearing glitters in the half light. Twenty years ago it must have been worth a sheik's ransom, with its thousands of blue glass seed beads. It's dated now, but there's still some of the old jazz in it. The butterfly that's apparently taken up residence in my heart throws itself against my ribcage, presumably hoping to flutter up a little closer up to the stage. I can't blame it. There's a kind of charm to the routine, the gloves and the heels and the bright but gravelly singing voice. He sounds like he's having fun.

So it's this kind of club. The pieces all click together for me, the bouncer and the story about the money, and the crime. No wonder someone thinks he can get away with harassing the establishment.

I wait at the edge of the stage until the song is done. He comes skipping into the wings like a man half his age and skids to a sudden stop when he spots me, sharp enough to leave marks on the wooden floor. His eyes go wide and round. If my heart is fluttering, from the looks of it his is probably spinning like a windmill.

"Oh," he says, "Perry. How unexpected. And by unexpected, I mean, I was sure you'd come in after business hours." He laughs nervously, pulling off the huge pearlescent clip-on earrings like they're the most dire part of his ensemble.

What could I say, even if I could say something at all? I didn't wait till closing because I'm nosy. I didn't trust him. And in a way I was right, but mostly I was wrong. It's not a shady club after all, except in the technical sense, which doesn't matter. So I just smile, and shrug, and nod towards the stage.

"You liked it?" he says, turning to look as well. He plants his hands on his hips, regarding the stage like a critical referee. "It was alright, but they won't pay for chorus girls on a week night so it doesn't have the _pizzazz_ I was really going for. I was thinking of a kick line."

I'm quickly finding that it's hard not to smile when he's in his element like that. Compared to the nervous hunch from a few hours ago, it's as if a heavy suit has been peeled off him. I catch his eye and point down the length of his dress, hoping to convey the right question.

"Oh, the dress," Doofenshmirtz says, brushing nervously at the beads. "Yeah, I had to wear them for a while back in the old country, there was this mix up with the rations, it's a whole thing I shouldn't get into right now, and I guess I just never saw what the fuss was about—very popular with the soldier boys, very swishy, and they look good under a limelight, am I right?"

He gives me this desperately cheerful look, the kind of look a death row inmate gives the guard who's just opened his cell. The butterfly in my heart flutters in distress. I give him my most reassuring smile, and he positively lights up.

To be honest, this is not helping my periodic mental inquiries about his marital state. Some people would assume that, with the type of club and the dress and all, that would be the end of that. Some people haven't been around the same blocks I've been around.

"Desoto hasn't been around so far," Doofenshmirtz says. "Hang on till closing time. I've got another number, and then we can get a drink. You do—you do drink, right?"

Most people have this idea in their heads that private dicks are bourbon-guzzling debt-piling chumps. I don't go in for that sort of thing. Clean life, neat space, and relentless work ethic. Just because a PI isn't getting a paycheck from the city commissioner doesn't mean they shouldn't take their work seriously. On the other hand, with Doofenshmirtz making that face, it's hard to say no to anything.

I settle in between a couple of prop boxes and watch the rest of the show from the side lines. He sparkles out there, even without the chorus girls or the kick line. His voice is a little… well, it's carrying the tune, and it's carrying it in a bucket made of gravel and enthusiasm. But it grows on you.

Conventional wisdom goes that in your career as a private eye, everyone gets at least one Dame. Not just a regular lady. You get plenty of those. They mean a heart squeezer, the show stopper, the big trouble in a glossy little package. A Dame. Watching the doctor croon his Fitzgerald love song, I'm starting to wonder if there isn't something like that after all. Even for private eyes who never had much to do with either ladies or dames.

I'm half way done with a cigarette when he steps off again, flicking dust from the bangs of his bobbed wig. He's pulling his wallet from the pocket of his jacket, on the rack, when he notices the smoke.

"You know those—those things are bad for your lungs," Doofenshmirtz tells me.

I glance down at the cigarette. Everybody who came back from the war smokes now. They gave you a pack with your rations because paper is cheaper than spam. I wasn't much for the habit before I left, but once it gets you it really gets you.

"I know what you're thinking," Doofenshmirtz says, holding up his hands, " _nobody_ believes me when I tell them. But, have you ever noticed how you can't do much without wheezing once you start smoking them? I've been working on this machine—" he unfolds a smudged diagram from his peeling wallet, showing me a contraption that looks like the devil got drunk and seduced a blacksmith's bellows. I blanch.

"Yeah," he says, without looking up, "it's a little clunky but it'll do the job. I wish the patent office would write me back already."

He folds it up again and takes my arm, pulling me down the steps and into the dimness of the seating area. The piano player is flying solo now, and Doofenshmirtz hums along to _As Time Goes By_ like he's heard it a thousand times before. He picks out a table and talks the bartender out of a couple drinks, less certain and less easy in his movements without the stage lights pouring over him. He trips on a patron's chair and gets into a petty argument about whose fault it was. I watch him with my cheek in one hand. I'm getting the feeling this sort of thing happens around him a lot.

In the course of the next two hours he tells me more than I ever would have asked to know about a small Germanic territory called Drusselstein, where he apparently grew up before the first world war. They were independent, and then they were part of Germany, and now it sounds like they're independent again. He tells me he got involved in the war younger than some boys, but it was the tail end of the conflict and by then they weren't picky about manpower. He tells me he used to entertain in a POW camp, with a troupe. He tells me he was married, but he's not married anymore. Heinz Doofenshmirtz doesn't seem to have any secrets, even concerning things I'm almost certain he signed confidentiality waivers on.

"During the last war, I was working on this bomb for the American army," Doofenshmirtz says, proving my point, "not the—not the _big one_ , the Japanese one; we were working with infinianite—"

I hold up a hand to cut him off, partly because I'm not sure I should be hearing any of this, and partly because a latecomer has walked through the door. I check the clock. It's nearly closing. He's a big man, the kind that looks like he's made from a couple of smaller men stuffed into a single trench coat. I tip my head quietly in his direction.

"Huh?" Doofenshmirtz says. "Oh. Yep, that's the lug."

I set my glass down.

"You're gonna follow him?" Doofenshmirtz says, sounding uneasy. "Don't you wanna… wait a while? I mean, we'll be fine for another night. No point in rushing a good investigation, right?"

As a matter of fact, I think I know Desoto. And if I know him right, this is going to be a lot simpler than a typical investigation. Already I'm thinking of how to tell the doctor that I won't require the usual fee. Desoto ought to back off at the first sign of a challenge, mangy bottom of the dog pack that he is. He's only looking for someone weaker to flex his muscles at. Mobsters like him can't do anything without a boss showing them where to plant their feet. I imagine myself telling Doofenshmirtz that the drinks and the company were payment enough.

After a few minutes of intimidating the patrons, Desoto scales the plywood steps and disappears into backstage. I straighten my tie and follow, ducking into the sawdust-scented darkness. There's no sign of him but the faint haze of rain in the air, drifting in from the exit door. Judging from its placement in the building, it ought to open up into an alley. I reach into my pocket for the pistol I make a point of never checking at the coat rack. Another detective might go right through that door, expecting to find nothing on the other side but a scandalous liaison with a waiter. That was what I was hired for, after all, but I didn't live this long by expecting things to be easy.

Pressed along the wall beside it, I push the door slightly ajar. Nothing outside seems immediately amiss. I slip through, keeping myself in the shadow of the exit until I can quietly close it again. The alley is empty. That's not right. If the alley is empty then where is—

The cage, when it falls, is cartoonishly precise. It reminds me of nothing so much as the animated slapstick I took Phineas and Ferb to see the last time I visited them. The metal hits the pavement with a clang, bouncing a little on contact—it can't be very heavy, I think, not if it bounces like that—and it screens me off from the rest of the world with a set of iron bars each about as thick as my arm.

Desoto reappears, lurking like an uncertain ghost in the steam and haze of the alley. I squint past him, looking for another spot of darkness. This is too complicated for the likes of Desoto. He needs direction.

The backstage door creaks open again, and out steps Doofenshmirtz, who takes a quick assessment of the situation and turns to Desoto.

"Did you get the gun?" he asks.

"Er," Desoto says, "no."

Doofenshmirtz lets out a frustrated noise. "I _told_ you," he says, "you disarm him in the stage area, _then_ you run outside. He could shoot us any time now, you dumkoff."

"Yeah," Desoto says, "but I know him. He's scary. I like all my fingers unbroken, Doc."

Doofenshmirtz blows out a cheek full of irritated air and spins on his two-inch heels. "Sorry about that," he tells me, "good help is, well, it's hard to find isn't it. Especially when somebody else is supplying it."

I'm in a cage. In an alley way. And a night club singer is berating a mobster for not taking my gun earlier. I usually consider myself a man of the world, but this is a new one for me. Doofenshmirtz must see the look I'm giving him, because he skips over and leans a hip against the cage.

"You like the trap?" he asks, rapping one of the bars with his gloved knuckles. "I haven't done this in _ages._ I gotta say, it feels good to get back in the game! And you're such a good sport, really, just a pleasure to work with. You should definitely come investigate my next crime. I think we could have a good thing."

I raise an eyebrow at him. If there's a crime going on here, besides dropping objects on innocent investigators, it's news to me.

"It's nothing personal," he reassures me, "I'm only subcontracting right now. Boy, you have _really_ made some people in the mob hopping mad. Anyways, Desoto's boss should be around here innnnnn… about two minutes, and he's going to have some words for you. Or whatever it is gorillas like that use instead of words, I'm thinking big heavy sticks?"

I look down at the bottom of the cage. I'm pretty sure I can lift this, or at least knock it over. And I'm still armed. I close my fingers over the pistol in my pocket. They tell you not to fire at people if you're not willing to kill them. Well, I don't want to kill anyone even at the worst of times, but especially—and I'm not entirely sure why—not the bizarre German who has trapped me in an alleyway with a member of the criminal organization I've spent the last four years trying to take down.

The faint light from the yellow clouds above the city goes abruptly dark. Above the roof of the club, the puffed expanse of a zeppelin is slowly passing overhead. The rain goes strangely quiet around us, as the ship blots out the sky.

"Stop by for a gin sometime!" Doofenshmirtz says. "You know where to find me!"

And then he does something I've been half thinking of for hours now, in the back of my mind. He reaches between the bars and reels me forward, towards him, and plants a kiss at the corner of my mouth. For a moment I think I see gardenias blooming around us. White flowers in the rain.

A ladder uncoils from high above us and hits the ground. Doofenshmirtz readjusts the brim of my hat while I am busy trying to stay upright and professional. I know that Ella Fitzgerald isn't _actually_ singing in the background, but it feels a little bit like that anyhow.

Every good detective story has a no-good dame. Mine shoots me a wink and a little wave, and grabs hold of the ladder as the zeppelin rises slowly into the clouds.

I don't know what this is, but I've got a feeling it's the kind of thing that gravity promises raindrops on their way down.


	2. The Gemalten Gnome

Danville at night glows and shouts like a ten dollar carnival after all the children have been dragged home to their teddy bears, the roundabout on Main Street a tilt-a-whirl full of lights and velocity. It's a strange city, strange to me and strange to itself—full of surprises both cruel and kind. Unlike most guys in my profession, Lady Luck always seems to be on my shoulder at the ring toss. But there's always _someone_ who has to lose, it seems.

Detective Pinky Garcia, a junior PI, comes staggering through my door at six in the morning, while I'm half a sip deep into my morning cup. His hand on the door leaves damp streaks down the black emblazoned letters of my name, like agonized commas. He's soaking, trailing streams from his trench coat, as he coughs and collapses onto my carpet. I move before I completely understand what's happened. What is Pinky doing in my office? Why does he look like a rat that got caught in a drainage system? I get a hand underneath his chin and feel for his vitals.

The water is clammy, but his skin feels like it's at the beginning drop of a fever. My gut is telling me that this isn't an innocent accident, not with the way he came barging into my office like that, but I swallow down the detective instincts and pull him into the chair across from my desk. There's still some hot water in the kettle. I pour a second cup of oolong and push it into his hands, while his teeth chatter chatter chatter. It takes a minute, but I'm patient. I sit down in my own chair, and I wait for him to explain.

In a stutter that's only exacerbated by his chattering teeth, Pinky tells me about his night. Yesterday he was contacted by a client who wanted her ex-husband investigated, claiming that he had stolen something from her that she had been entitled to retain in the divorce. Some kind of statue. Lawn ornament. Well, Pinky didn't usually get theft cases, and it seemed like a good way to catch a metaphorical pat on the head from Monogram, who doesn't often pay much attention to the small time players in his own agency. I'm sympathetic to the problem. I really wish he'd pay a little more attention to someone else and a little less to me, sometimes.

In any case, Pinky tells me, the investigation started off pretty standard, with the target hanging around some shady clubs and the like, but last night it got weird. There was some kind of exchange, in the darkness of the docks, a handoff that reeked of more than harbor salt. The target seemed spooked. I'm reading between the lines here, but I suspect this was about the time Pinky tipped him off.

The target led him across town after that, across the botanical gardens and over Water Street bridge, where Pinky lost visual on him just before reaching the zenith of the bridge. He pauses there. I've got the feeling there's something he's not telling me, about what happened at the bridge, but there's not much I can do about it if he doesn't want to tell me. So, he says, he took a wrong step—and found himself snapped up tight in some kind of rubber restraint. Like car tires, he tells me.

Doofenshmirtz. I'm jumping to conclusions, of course, but the moment Pinky says that, my head is full of Doofenshmirtz—his glittering dress, his hand-sewn pockets, his sooty driving gloves. Weird traps sound just like him. My heart pounds.

"A, after that," Pinky is saying, "I flo-floated for a while, I think I wuh-was smaller than the t, t, trap. Worked myself out."

I reach out and lay a hand over Pinky's hand, on the handle of the cup. He looks miserable, but it could have been much worse. He's a capable detective. I give him a reassuring smile.

He tries for a smile back, but his anxious teeth make it difficult for him. "I—" he trails off, and I know it has nothing to do with his speech impediment. There's a different kind of nervous in his eyes, an uneasiness I haven't seen there before. "P-P-Perry, you know I—I trust you, you're the only one a guy can really t-trust in this city."

I pull my hand back. Wherever this is going, I don't like it.

He slides his hand underneath his oversized coat. He's a small man, made even smaller by the yards of canvas dwarfing him. He pulls out a paper-wrapped package, peeling apart the edges to reveal the peaked cap of a bizarre statuette. I've lived in America my whole life, but I've seen lawn gnomes before. This one has all the classical grace of a museum piece, matte black from head to ceramic toe, and all the old world ungainliness of a Grimm's Brothers woodcut. Looking at it fills me with the same unease that a particularly strange clown at the carnival might—a back-to-the-tent-wall, take-your-nephew's-hands kind of unease.

"It's wa-what my c-c-client described," Pinky says, eyes flickering towards the door to my office like lightning skittering from cloud to cloud. "But I d-don't think it was h-hers."

What he's asking me, without coming out and asking me, is whether I'll hide this for him until it becomes clear what's actually going on. He's going to go to ground, as soon as he leaves here—I doubt I'll hear from him for at least a week, maybe more if it takes that long. He's a competent detective, but he's got a family of his own to think of. And maybe he's not thinking about it this way, but if he gives me that piece of hot ceramic—if I let him give it to me—it becomes my problem once and for all. There's no way I can leave this riddle uninvestigated.

It doesn't matter if it wasn't your case to begin with; when someone throws your friend into the river, you're supposed to do something about it.

I accept the bundle of headaches and watch Pinky slink away, still shivering.

Maybe it's wishful thinking to suspect that Heinz Doofenshmirtz is involved in this mess. Dr. D and I have unfinished history, the kind that ends with a kiss and twenty of the mafia's burliest thugs bearing down on one troublesome private detective. As I catch the railing of a trolley car passing through down-town, I flip open my wallet. The card he gave me is still there. The club he works at is still there. Of course I went looking for him, after all the business with the ambush was over, but wherever that zeppelin of his was headed, it must have been intent on making a long trip of it.

The trolley takes a sharp left turn into my side of town, and I clutch at my hat with the same hand that's holding my wallet. The wind is picking up—these cars are so much faster now that my nephews have been tinkering with them, and I'm proud but I'm also having more trouble hitching rides lately. The calling card in the pocket gives a wriggle, and then it pops out entirely, swirling away in the wake of the zipping trolley car.

I stare at the white speck until it isn't a speck at all anymore. It's—probably for the best, Monogram wouldn't like it if he knew I was holding onto a memento like that, and it's not very professional mooning over a piece of cardstock like that, but—

I can't help but feel like I just lost something priceless.

The trolley drops me back off at the office, just in time for our receptionist to catch me at the door. He gets a hand around my elbow and whips me around into the coat room, and then lets out a pitiful wheeze as my other arm flattens his throat. Reflex—I reel my arm back in and try not to look too sheepish while he's coughing and rubbing at his neck.

"Hhnnk," Carl says.

I pat him on the shoulder until he gets his breath back underneath him.

"Detective—" he coughs again, "—Perry, you have a visitor."

I blink at him a couple of times. There wasn't any need to whip me off into a coat closet like a secret mistress on the upper east side just for a _client_.

"It's Doctor Doofenshmirtz," Carl says.

Doctor D! My dame, my unclosed case, my old nemesis. He _is_ involved, and he's _here._

In the alley where we last met, his lips against the corner of my mouth burned like hot steam from the devil's own tea kettle, gone in the flash of an instant with nothing to remember them by but scalded skin. Whatever he's up to now, he won't find it easy with me on the case.

"Um," Carl says, "Detective? Detective, are you alright? I know he got you pretty good earlier this year, but don't worry, I'll get the rest of the agency—"

I wave off the suggestion urgently. No one else needs to get involved in this, whatever it is. Doofenshmirtz is _my_ case, and I can't help the rush of proprietary feeling that sweeps through me at the first thought of bringing anyone else from the agency in on it.

"No?" Carl gives me an uneasy look, magnified by his coke bottle glasses, but Carl is a good kid—almost a friend, for all that I've never seen him outside of work—and he knows when I'm being serious. "Alright…" he says, "…but at the first sound of trouble, I'm calling for help."

I nod gratefully and go to leave, but he catches me one more time by the sleeve.

"Um," he says. "You haven't seen Detective Garcia, have you? He didn't report in for work today. No one has seen him since he took that case for that woman a couple days ago."

A spooked detective can go to ground like a team of moles in a dog pen. Pinky's probably half way to Ecatapec by now, if he's taken a mind to it. I shake my head, offering Carl my empty palms. He buys it. I don't like lying to coworkers, but in this business I've found that you can't rely too heavily on anyone else when the wire is against the bone. What they don't know can't trip me up.

At my door, I take a deep breath and then I throw it open, dropping into a defensive stance that's ready for absolutely anything.

Heinz Doofenshmirtz freezes over my desk, one of my framed photos in his gloved hands. It drops an inch. I dash across the floor and catch the photo as it slips out of his half-mechanical grip, hugging it close to my chest.

"Uh, heh," he says, wriggling his fingers nervously. "Sorry about… that."

I shoot him a warning look and lay the picture face down on my desk, pointedly. If he's going to get my boys involved, he's crossing a line that I won't stand for. Doesn't matter how captivating I found being held captive by him. I'll take him out of the game. But he doesn't seem bothered by the warning, so either he doesn't know what I mean or he wasn't thinking about it in the first place.

He's wearing those pearlescent clip-on disks again, the ones from the night club show. I wonder if he just forgot to take them off, or if he put them on specifically to meet me.

"Is your office getting more cluttered?" he asks me, peering around my very neat shelves. Aside from a number of new Lady Devonshire paperbacks, all precisely organized, I don't know what he's talking about. Oh, and the case files. My work load doesn't ever seem to break.

I sit down behind my desk, crossing my arms.

"Right," he says, and he drops into the chair across from me. "So, uh, long time no see?"

I think my expression makes it perfectly clear what I think of that opener.

"Yeeeaah," he says, "I know, that's my bad. I told Pnorm to make a getaway and he took us all the way to Casablanca. You do _not_ want to know what a hassle it is getting back out of that city."

I tap my watch.

He frowns, wrinkling his beaky nose. "Testy much? I just sat down. What happened to good old fashioned small talk?"

I pop the top drawer of my desk and lift a pair of handcuffs with one finger, letting them glitter in the afternoon sunlight. Doofenshmirtz swallows audibly.

Of course I can't actually _arrest_ him, not even a citizen's arrest. Technically he hasn't done anything illegal that I can prove in court, there's no warrant out on him, and even if I wanted to put him away forever, in this town it would never take. It doesn't mean I couldn't make things a bit uncomfortable for him if necessary.

"Look, there's no need for _that_ ," Doofenshmirtz says, "we're all friends here! I came to you because I _trust_ you, Detective Perry. I know you're a guy of your word."

I drop the cuffs back into the drawer and slide it closed.

Doofenshmirtz leans forward, practically draping himself over my desk. "I've got this missing heirloom thing," he says, tracing one finger over the stamped date on my open case file. I snap the thing closed.

"It's not worth muuuuch," he sing-songs, "it's just a little thing. Sentimental, y'know?"

My gut is still telling me that that the man from the bridge is the same as the man in front of me now. The gnome, black enamel and uncanny, looms large in my memory. I nod slowly, mind racing.

"Do you think you could help me find it? I know you don't usually do lost items, but maybe for old times' sake? And I know who took it!"

That gets my attention. If he knows Pinky already, things are about to get much more complicated. I gesture for him to go on, leaning a little closer myself.

"Shouldn't be too hard to find, not for _you_ ," he says, digging in his wallet until he finds the right photo, worn at the corners. As he rifles through the pockets I catch sight of familiar white cardstock, the black ink emblem in the corner a three-toed flipper. My card. He kept my card.

"My ex wife," he says, "Charlene."

From the photo, above the shoulders of a tiny girl, the handsome face of Charlene Doofenshmirtz gives me a knowing look.

.

Wherever Pinky Garcia is right now, I'm sure he knows the answers to some questions I'd dearly like to ask him. I come home from the office in such a whirl of them that I almost don't notice the tail on me. It's not subtle, but I don't mind him knowing where I live. It's no secret.

There's a couple of police thugs waiting at my door, but they're probably not related to the tail—that's not how the boys in blue operate in this town. I give them a little flick of a wave as I come around the corner. They don't return the gesture.

"Perry Fletcher," the one on the left says. I've never seen him before.

I nod. It says as much on my mail slot.

"We've got some questions for you," says the one on the right. I know him. He's an old friend from the holding tank down at central. Smith, or Anderson, or something.

I shrug and stop in front of them, waiting for somebody to get to the point.

"You gonna let us in?" Andersmith says, scowling like a bulldog with a mean streak.

I lean a hip against the hallway wall and cross my arms.

"It doesn't matter," Andersmith's partner says, sighing as he goes for his notebook. Surprising. I've never known any of the Chief's boys to cut a break for anybody darker than about medium beige. And heaven help you if you're a mute with an attitude problem.

The partner hands me the notebook. He says, "You know anything about the disappearance of one Pablo Garcia, member of your agency?"

My eyes narrow at him. Putting aside the fact that Pinky's only been gone two days at maximum, the police haven't yet taken interest in a missing person's case where the victim wasn't a Mr. Scott or Bridges or something like that. And anyways, there's a significant subset of cops in this town who'd like to see the whole IAWACA floating at the bottom of the Danville River.

 _No_ , I write.

"You _sure_?" Andersmith says. "Your families used to be pretty close, we hear. You used to spend a lotta time at his place, we hear."

 _If ur accusing me of smthng_ , I write, _pls accuse outright_

"We hear Pablo is Mrs. Garcia-Shapiro's second husband," Andersmith goes on, still not actually making an accusation, "women like that—"

I scrape an underline beneath the previous line and smack the notebook into his broad chest. I'm not going to stand here and listen to these men insult one of the kindest women I've ever known, not for anything. If they want to drag me back for obstruction of justice, well, it wouldn't be the first time. It doesn't scare me.

I push past them and close the door behind me with a firm click. I should probably get a telegram over to the Flynn-Fletchers, in case I need bail in the next couple days. I hate to call on them like that, to get them involved in business that isn't theirs, but I promised Lawrence a long time ago that I'd come to him first.

I met the Flynn-Fletchers after I came back from the war, in the cells of central holding. I'd only just got into the snooping business, and I was finding out quickly that a private detective with my coloring wasn't welcome anywhere. Lawrence had been down at the station to bail out his neighbor's husband, two tiny sons in tow. With his posh accent and mild mannerisms, Lawrence had a way with law officers that even officers themselves didn't quite understand. They had come for Pinky, but the boys took one look at me and, I'll never know why, but they just knew. I remember I smiled at them. I think I waved. They looked like good kids, the kind of kids that see what adults are too busy to really see. I just wanted them to feel less afraid, but I guess they weren't afraid of anything. Still aren't, really, even when they ought to be.

Lawrence didn't ask questions. He paid my bail, and when the cops gave him a hard time about it he said I was his brother, and whether they believed him or not—I'm sure they didn't—that was the end of that. I went home with them. I lived with them for a while, for a couple years, and they were good years too.

I came into a family pretty late in life, but that's alright. Better late than never.

My apartment looks subtly out of order. Chairs not quite pushed in, paintings hanging just a little crooked—the place is barely big enough to hold me and a stove, but in a way that makes it easier to tell when things have been moved. I sigh, and I hang my coat on the hook. This is why I don't live with the Flynn-Fletchers anymore. I couldn't live with myself if one of them got caught in the crossfire.

There's a faint perfume in the air, which probably wouldn't be noticeable if this place didn't have the ventilation of a subterranean tomb. It smells of something expensive but subtle, the kind of thing you expect from a woman people call Mademoiselle. Well, whoever it was, they didn't take anything, which means they didn't find what they were looking for. I don't doubt that it comes back to the gnome, one way or another.

Where does this convoluted drama originate? With Dr. D, my old nemesis, or with his mysterious ex-wife, Charlene? But what about the hand-off the night that Pinky was pushed off the bridge, and my tail earlier today? There's more than two players here, I can feel it. There's empty spaces at the center of the puzzle.

I start with the obvious piece, the woman I've been hired to investigate. It's me who has the gnome, of course, but that doesn't mean there's not something to be learned from digging around Charlene's place. I write up a couple of telegraph messages and drop them off on my way to check out the ritzy house in the nicer side of town that the ex-Mrs. Doofenshmirtz keeps. I get some suspicious looks hopping off the trolley, but it's not hard to make yourself look unobtrusively like hired help with the aid of a couple solid props. With a chimney sweeper over my shoulder, I can go most places nearly invisibly.

I ring the doorbell a couple of times. It's nearly six, and I wouldn't expect the place to be empty. It's not Charlene who gets the door, though—sharper and taller, but still perfectly recognizable from Dr. D's photograph, Charlene's daughter peers out at me over the threshold.

"I don't think we called for a chimney sweep," she says, scanning me over with one quick but thorough look.

I shake my head, and flourish a little coupon for her to examine. I don't mind doing some work to make the cover story more believable. People say the strangest things to the help sometimes.

She takes the coupon with a little humming noise, and she says, "Wait here. I'll get mom."

She leaves the door cracked. On the little breeze that slips through in her wake, I catch the scent of something expensive and subtle, the kind of thing you expect from a woman people call Mademoiselle. So that's how it is, then. I set my tools aside and pull my hat back on, as I wait for Charlene to appear. Let's make this an honest interview, one player to another, and cut the subterfuge. Or some of it, at least.

Charlene takes one look at me, hat and all, and her lips quirk up into a knowing half-smile. "Detective," she says. "Why don't you come in?"

It's a very nice house, full of ornaments that the eye nearly slides over, each calculated for the perfect mixture of unassuming and rich. Between my time around Lawrence's business and my years of tracking down stolen objects, I'm certain that I can spot at least three true antiques in the foyer alone. Charlene does well for herself. In the living room, I take a seat on a settee that is quite probably a 17th century French original, and I watch her as she lifts the crystal brandy decanter from the shelf.

"I can imagine why you're here," she says, "although you work much quicker than I expected!"

She offers me a glass. I know better than to take it but, in truth, I do have a taste for the finer things, and that brandy looks like the real deal. I sip at it as she folds herself gracefully into an arm-chair.

"I know Heinz went to see you," she says. "I'm sure he thinks I've taken the statue back into my possession. I'm sure you've been asked to reacquire it. But I don't have it, you see."

I watch her carefully. There's no mistaking the gentle certainty of a woman with a flawless poker face, but in this case it's pretty safe to say that she means it.

"How much is Heinz offering you?" she asks me. "It can't be much. He's dreadful with money, always has been. I remember once he spent his entire month's alimony on some crackpot automaton, and Vanessa said… oh, but I go on."

Heinz actually hasn't offered me anything. I expect he'll try to double cross me if I _do_ turn something up for him. I saw the "dirty double-crosser" card in his wallet while he was looking for Charlene's photo.

At my silence, Charlene says, "Whatever it is, I would more than happily triple it if you would come over to my side. The object is rightfully mine, in any case—or at least as much mine as it is anyone's."

I raise an eyebrow at that. Somehow I truly doubt it.

"I found it in Casablanca earlier this year," Charlene tells me. "I'm the only one in this silly farce who even knows its real value. Roddenstein and my ex-husband are opportunists, that's all. The acquisition of rare items is my business, Detective, and I've been looking for this one in particular for seventeen years. If anyone has a right to the object, it must be me."

Casablanca. The catching-sieve of the world. Dr. D was there too, until recently, and probably this Roddenstein, whoever he is. From what I know of Casablanca, I doubt Charlene came by anything there honestly.

"Do consider my offer, Detective. You won't find anything searching after me, but if you were to ally with me instead… Well, it would _certainly_ profit you. I'm prepared to offer you a significant percentage of the object's resale value."

I slip a notepad from my coat and write out, _What is the object?_

"They haven't told you?"

I shake my head.

"Then maybe I'm the only one who knows," Charlene muses. "And what one person knows is a lot more valuable than something multiple people know. Sorry, Detective, but I'll keep my secrets and you can keep yours."

I set my glass down and stand.

"Really?" she says, "That's where you're drawing the line?"

I tip my hat.

I've got no intention of helping Charlene, regardless of what she does or doesn't tell me. If she'd like to keep her secrets, I don't mind too much.

"I suppose I'll see you around," Charlene says, standing as well.

I'm certain she will.

.

I find Doofenshmirtz in my office again the next day, wringing his gloved hands by the window. I like the way the venetian blinds cast stripes of light over him, like the coloring of a wild cat. I don't like that he's alone in my office again.

I close the door loudly.

"What did you find out?" he demands, practically vaulting the desk to get to me. "Where's she hiding it?"

I shake my head _no_.

"No, you didn't find anything out, or no, she's not hiding it?"

I indicate the second option.

"Well if _she_ doesn't have it, then—" his eyes go comically wide, and he snaps his mechanical fingers with a faint twang. " _Rodney_."

I lean back against the edge of my desk, watching the wheels visibly turning in his head. The gnome isn't his, and it isn't Charlene's either. She stole it from someone else, and Dr. D stole it from her. I don't see that either of them ought to get their hands on it, one way or another. But how does Roddenstein fit into this?

I fish out the notepad from earlier and tap the same question I asked Charlene. _What is the object?_

"Huh?" Doofenshmirtz says. "Oh, it's a gnome. Sorry, did I forget to mention that part?"

I tap _what_ again.

Doofenshmirtz purses his lips, beating some obscure rhythm on the side of one leg. "Well, it's sooort of like a fairy tale. Back in Drusselstein, which is where I was born—you remember that part right?—they used to tell stories about the _Gemalten Gnome_ ," he says, in the same wondrous sing-song that Linda used to say "cave of wonders" with, in her bedtime stories.

I cross my arms.

"No no," he says, "it's a real story, cross my heart. They say back in the middle ages, Drusslestein used to be a wealthy and prosperous land—it's, uh, it's kind of ironic if you think about it nowadays, actually. Anyhow, back then, a lot of the other kingdoms were like, _hey, get a load of these guys, they've got so much_ , I dunno, barley or whatever it is medieval people went gaga for back then, _we should invade and get a slice of that pie._ So the king of Drusselstein had the rarest and most precious treasure in the kingdom sealed up inside a gnome, to hide it from the invaders. _Ironically_ , the army got turned around at one end of the giant mill crank and never actually _made_ it to the treasury, but the wagon that was carrying the gnome got mixed up into the invasion's entourage and it was neeeever seen again."

 _This_ is what all the trouble is about? A medieval fairy tale?

"Of course _I_ was the one who told Charlene about it," Doofenshmirtz grumbles, "and she wants to act like she's some kind of an expert, just because she did all the _leg_ work and the _investigation_ and the _bribery_. If it's supposed to go to anybody it's supposed to go to _me_ , I mean, it's _my_ country's story."

Not an impressive pitch.

Doofenshmirtz goes on muttering to himself, but I tune it out. What to do with the gnome, then, if it doesn't really belong to anyone? I can't exactly return it to its original owner. And if I leave the situation between the thieves alone at this point, someone is probably going to get thrown in the river for keeps this time. If I do my job for no other reason, it's to stop webs of petty chaos like these from endangering innocent bystanders.

I guess I _could_ just give the gnome to Dr. D, and let him hand it off to some old world collector far away from my city. But that would be letting him profit off his nefarious deeds, and deep down I think I've already decided that it's my job to see that Heinz Doofenshmirtz gets what he deserves.

There's a hand waving in my face. I push it away and scowl up at my client, who doesn't seem at all bothered by my glare.

"Wanna get lunch?" he says, like he's said it a couple times already without my noticing.

I lean to look around behind him. The clock tells me it's about time for most people to be thinking about lunch, and the clear sky tells me it's going to be a beautiful day for a walk up to the Chinese place at the top of the hill. Doofenshmirtz looks hopeful. I've been out with him once before, and I know for a fact that he's a babbler, a terrible tipper, and a man who will inevitably manage to tick off at least one person in any room where he stands for more than ten minutes.

I nod, and I reach for my hat.

On the walk to lunch, Doofenshmirtz tells me about the maple syrup smuggling ring he was involved with before the last war, up at the Canadian border. At lunch, he tells me more than I ever wanted to know about the textile strength of oyster spit. It's unbelievable how much this man has managed to do in forty-seven years, and without a penny to show for any of it. Between the soup and the entrée, I manage to get the discussion onto the topic of Charlene. Directing a conversation with Dr. D is about as easy as herding a stampede—you can get him going, but you can't do much about the specific path he takes.

"Doomed by a _puppet_ ," he says, sourly, as I crunch on the last of my fried noodles. "You'd think she could at least wait until we were off stage to ask for the divorce."

I'm a little bit terrified by the specifics of this story, actually. It takes place in Hong Kong, and that's all I plan to pass along. Suffice to say it might have ended with puppets, but it certainly didn't stop at them.

"So anyways at _that_ point," he carries on, "I had to find my own way out of the country. But the joke's on her, 'cause I took her seat on the steam ship and sailed right on out of there."

I give him a surprised look. Most of his stories end with being run out of town on a rail, or at least with major catastrophe.

"We _were_ married for six years," Doofenshmirtz says. "I may not know what her birthday is, or what kind of seafood she likes at a restaurant, but I definitely know which smugglers she has on her payroll."

Smugglers. Suddenly another piece of the gnome-shaped puzzle clicks. Charlene, by whatever underhanded means, arranges for the statue to be shipped out of Casablanca to her home in America. Doofenshmirtz, who is in the city as well, intercepts the shipment somewhere along the way. He, in turn, has the package stolen by Pinky, who falls into the river before it can be retrieved off his person.

We are eating out on the sidewalk, in the shade of a balcony that lets strips of glittering light fall between the slats. I haven't been noticing how nice it is, but as I catch sight of a couple familiar bulks coming over the hill, I can feel exactly how much pleasantness evaporates right up off the table. Andersmith and his partner make a beeline for us.

Doofenshmirtz follows my eye. "Ugh," he says, "Johnny Law. What do _you_ guys want?"

Andersmith eyes my client in a way that makes my hand reflexively tighten on my chopsticks. "What an odd couple," he says, glancing down to the wood creaking in my grip. "You know, some folks judge a man by the company he keeps, Detective Fletcher. You running with the gunsel now?"

I shoot a look at Doofenshmirtz, who's going red in the cheeks. I shouldn't be surprised that the police know him already—they're on opposite legs of the tripod that keeps the mafia standing in this town, and at some point they're bound to meet at the middle. Doesn't seem like it's been a friendly meeting place, either.

"We got a tip," Andersmith goes on, "saying you aided in the disappearance of Pablo Garcia, who skipped town on account of some shady business with a street mugging."

I drop my cheek into my hand, already exhausted with this whole investigation. First he's murdered, now he's a criminal—they could at least stick to one story if they wanted to give me a hard time so badly.

"Heeeey," Doofenshmirtz says, "what a coincidence, I was just mugged the other night! Man, are you guys falling down on the job or what?"

His expression is one hundred percent genuine. I'm not sure how good of a liar he actually is—with Charlene it's easy to tell that I can't trust her half as far as I can throw her, but with Dr. D I'm just getting a mish mash of conflicting signals. When he's feeling guilty, I can practically sense it through a brick wall. But when he skims casually over the truth… well, I've fallen for it once already, haven't I?

If he knows that Pinky was the one who snagged the gnome off him, then he ought to know I have it. But he hired me to search Charlene's place, instead of just searching mine himself.

I scribble on the back of the bill and dangle the message from two fingers. _Come back with a warrant_ , it says.

Andersmith's partner puts a restraining hand on his shoulder, wincing slightly. "There's no need for that," he tells me, "we just want to know what it is that you know."

From my coat pocket, I flip over one of my business cards and show him the rate per hour. He frowns.

"You tell 'em, Detective Perry," Doofenshmirtz says, stuffing a wonton into his mouth. "They can line up and pay like any other sap in this town."

I give him a withering look. He hasn't even _broached_ the topic of paying me.

.

As I hop off the trolley at the edge of my neighborhood, I spy the familiar flash of a trench coat and a low-slung brim. My tail is back. I take a deliberate left turn into the heart of the neighborhood and watch him slink after, down the alley and into the lobby of another apartment building. As the door swings closed behind me, I dash to the back exit and circle around the side. There he is, hulking on the stoop of the building, trying to decide whether he should follow me inside and risk being cornered. Judicious, but he picked the wrong time to start being clever.

I slide along the edge of the façade, unseen, and spin a new chamber into place in my revolver. The quiet click is warning enough. My stalker turns, slowly, revealing a face as feminine as it is clearly inanimate. A mechanical woman. Remarkable—and suspicious.

"Oh," she says, in an artificial and alien cadence, "I appear to be spotted."

Charlene mentioned an automaton. Is this one Doofenshmirtz's work? Any man who can build such a delicate and complex prosthetic for himself is surely capable of making bigger and stranger. There's something clunky about her, though, something a little bit off. And besides, his methods lean more towards barging than stalking.

"Hello, Detective," she says. "Lovely weather we are having, isn't it?"

I gesture to her, the obvious question on my face.

"My name is Chloe," the automaton obliges. "That is not necessary, Detective, I know who you are."

I pause, with one of my business cards half out of my pocket, and then drop it back in. Force of habit.

"It seems we are at an impasse," Chloe says. "I am also armed, I am sorry to inform you."

Ah, there's the glint of metal in one of her oversized sleeves. I shrug, slowly, letting my pistol hang from one finger. I'm not interested in shooting anyone, not even someone who runs on what smells like diesel fuel.

There's a faint whirr and clank from somewhere inside of her. She says, "We are not going to engage in a quick draw?"

I shake my head. Wrong genre.

"Then what do we do now?" she asks.

I pull out my notepad and write for her, _I want 2 see ur boss_.

"He will not like that."

I make a twirling motion, pointing down at the street. I'll deal with that problem when I get to it.

Chloe whirr-clanks again, and then she offers me her hand. The fingers are blocky and single jointed, and they glint in the fading sunlight. Hesitating, I take it.

Chloe pulls me into an embrace like the bar of the tilt-a-whirl at the carnival and launches into the street, her feet skating over the pavement fast enough to reduce the lines in the cement of the sidewalk to an endless smooth blur. My heart tries to eject itself through my mouth.

By the time we come to a stop in the north side, I have completely lost track of how we got here, and I can feel my hair is scrambled like an egg with the shell left in. Very gently, Chloe peels me off of her coat and sets me on the ground, which I am never going to take for granted again. The house in front of us is a neat little German style cottage, with a bizarrely mismatched koi pond. Chloe knocks on the door.

The one who answers the door isn't Doofenshmirtz. That's both a kind of relief and more confusing. This one is an even odder looking man, bespectacled and bald, and possessed of a suspicious squint that makes me think he can't be very popular at parties.

"Chloe," he says, "what is the meaning of _this?_ "

"Doctor Von Roddenstein," Chloe says, "I have brought you the Detective."

"I said _follow_ him, not bring him _here_ , you fuming pile of junk." Rodney sneers like a man who has practiced sneering to an art form. Over his shoulder, I catch a glimpse of a table set for an old fashioned tea service. "You might as well come in," he tells me, in the long suffering tones of a man who believes himself to be the only genius among philistines.

I step into the house, and immediately I get a head full of diesel and smoke. He and Dr. D must be two of a kind, whatever that kind is exactly.

"It's impossible to find good help these days," Rodney opines, shutting the door on Chloe entirely. "No, I don't need a card. I know who you are, Detective."

I drop the card again.

"I suppose you must be working for Charlene at this point," Rodney says, taking a seat at the tea table. "I know you visited her earlier."

I shake my head.

"No? You can't possibly still be working for Dr. _Slouchy._ "

I shake my head again.

There's a tray of cookies on Rodney's side of the table, which he makes no effort to offer me. "Neither of them," he concludes, munching on a gingerbread man. "So then, you've made the intelligent decision, and you're here to ally with me?"

Again, no.

Rodney scowls. "Well then _whose_ side _are_ you on?"

I tap my chest, just above my heart.

"Your own, hmm? I guess I should respect that," he says. There's a click, and then the glitter of a pistol just above the tablecloth. "I should," he adds, "but I don't really _care_."

The second time in less than an hour that I've been on the business end of a gun. I'm used to it, but it's still annoying. I purse my lips.

"That gnome is _mine_ ," Rodney tells me. "I stole it fair and square! And then some thug on the street tries to muscle me out of it? No sir, Not Aloyse Everheart Elizabeth Otto Wolfgang Gary Cooper Von Roddenstein!"

Thug? I stretch the points of this mystery out for examination. If Doofenshmirtz got it straight from the smuggler, then for Rodney to have been mugged in the street, that would mean…

Chloe is plenty big enough to overpower a man like Doofenshmirtz. She could have made the hand off to Rodney, just in time for Pinky to catch him alone on the bridge.

"So who has it now?" Rodney says. "Charlene? Or Doofy?"

I indicate _neither_.

"Inconceivable," Rodney snaps. "I know that little thug was on Charlene's payroll!"

I hold up a hand. This is going to be complicated. I slide my notepad to the middle of the table, and carefully write out, _21:00 tonight, my place. I can put u in contact w/ the 1 who has it._

Rodney narrows his eyes, but he slowly folds away the gun. "Well now I _know_ you don't have it," he remarks, mostly to himself, "or you would have negotiated."

I hold out a hand to him, over the tea pot at the middle of the table. Rodney eyes it for a long moment, but he does finally shake it—as briefly as possible, and then drops it immediately.

"Don't try anything funny," he warns me, as he pushes away from the table. "Nothing good ever happens to those who meddle in the affairs of a Von Roddenstein."

I roll my eyes at his back.

I catch a cab back across town, pausing at the telegraph station on my way, and arrive back home at last. Night is falling, its boots half way up the doorstep of the evening, and the higher windows of my building still glint with the reflection of a sun those of us down on the ground can no longer see. I duck out of the broad world and into the secretive white halls of my home.

Monty Monogram is waiting for me inside, as I hang my coat up on the hook. He grins at me when I tip my hat to him. In his arms is the paper bundle that's been sending me up and down this city for the last two days, looking precisely the way I remember it.

"I told myself I wouldn't peek," he says, spinning the thing between his hands. "But you gotta let me see what's in there. It's killing me."

I make a _carry on_ motion, as I put the kettle on the stove. I've got a hunch to look into, and I can do it just as easily with Monty as without him. He's a good kid, and someday he'll make a good detective, if that's really what he wants. Maybe he'll see something I don't.

There's three hours until the players reach the stage, and I still have to decide what I'm going to do about it all.

.

Doofenshmirtz arrives first, as expected. I find him at the door, absently leaning against the buzzer, my worn business card in his fingers. He jumps when I open it.

"Oh, mm, hello?" he says, shoving the card into one pocket. "I guess I got the directions right after all. I stopped to ask this guy around midtown and I swear you've never heard a more _ridiculous_ accent, really, some people are just unbelievable. Are you making coffee?"

I shake my head and indicate the tin of oolong.

"Huh," he says, "not very hard _boiled_ of you, Detective Perry."

I huff and shove a mug into his hands anyways. He takes a seat at my table, eyeing the room critically. I don't know why just looking at him sitting in my living room makes my heart beat like Chloe has dragged me off on her tilt-a-whirl ride again. Any second now he's going to say something nitpicky about the size of the place or the crowding on the table tops, or complain about the neighborhood, and I'll _still_ be seeing flowers. He's annoying, but I like him somehow.

I can't help it. When I think about giving him what he deserves—I don't know if it's a kiss or a kick in the teeth or maybe both—there goes my heart all over again.

"I thought it'd be tidier in here," he sniffs, "and bigger too. And your neighbor gave me a nasty look on the way in, do you know who she was? She's on my list now big time."

Unbelievable. I am in so much trouble with this one.

There's a ring at the door, long short long short, and I open it up to find Charlene, professionally early. Her eyes glitter underneath her veiled hat.

"I should have wondered," she says, with a modest little smile, "what was in it for you, really."

I step aside and allow her to slip past me, closing the door quietly behind. Dr. D gives her a sour look, while I pour her a cup of tea as well. She takes two sugars, just like her ex-husband. I guess some people would be a little uneasy, noticing a thing like that, but somehow everything about Charlene worries me _except_ for that.

"Heinz," she says, leaning against my window. "How did the travel treat you?"

Dr. D snorts. "Like you don't know," he mutters into his drink.

I leave them to it at the sound of impatient knocking, rapid knuckles against my door. Rodney waits outside, the hulking shape of Chloe at his shoulder. He's dressed up for the occasion. I nod personably to the automaton as her master bustles past me in a sulk that appears to be his permanent disposition.

" _Well_ ," Rodney says, "I'd say it's a pleasure to see you both, except that it most certainly is not."

"Dr. Von Roddenstein," Charlene says, almost warmly, "I believe I still owe you something for your help in Casablanca."

"I believe you _do_ ," he replies. "Detective, I'll have one of those drinks as well."

Pointedly, I drop a sugar cube into my own drink and settle back against the counter. After a moment of fuming, Rodney slumps into the remaining chair sans drink. Doofenshmirtz is squinting around him at the entry way, and after a second of dawning comprehension, he stabs a finger in Chloe's direction.

"Her! She's the one who mugged me! I'd recognize those big meaty grabbers anywhere," he says, miming a pair of claws. "You knocked me off, Rodney! And you used _my_ invention to do it!"

"I assure you," Rodney says, twirling a hand, "Chloe is one hundred _percent_ Von Roddenstein."

"Yeah, sure," Doofenshmirtz says. "You just stole my idea for Pnorm and put a wig on it, you hack."

"I _improved_ you idea for Pnorm. Inquire with the patent office," Rodney says. He examines his nails, uninterested. "Edison did it, and so did I."

"Gentlemen," Charlene interrupts. She is watching me, through the netting of her veil. "I think all of that can wait until we know what, exactly, the detective has gathered us here to discuss."

One by one, they turn to me. I reach into the cabinet beneath the sink and lift up the most shrouded figure of the Gemalten Gnome, black enamel peeking out from beneath the gray smear of newspaper. Behind me, I hear three simultaneous _clicks_.

I look up to find three different muzzles trained on me—Rodney's pistol and Charlene's luger, and Doofenshmirtz's oddly modified little gun with the copper tubing down its back. Sighing, I gesture to the lot of them. Surely they're bright enough to realize what will happen if one of them shoots. Charlene, of course, is the first to lower her gun. She's reached the same conclusion as I have.

" _You_ had it," Doofenshmirtz says, visibly bewildered. "You had it the _whole time?_ But why didn't you say anything?"

"Yes," Rodney says, "Why not? You could have offered it to any one of us already."

Charlene hasn't looked away from me for a moment. "So you mean to auction it between us," she concludes, her handsome features again in a perfect poker face. "That's a risky proposition detective."

I shake my head. From the nest of papers I lift up the gnome and lay it down on the counter, where everyone can see it. There is a glassier sheen to the bottom of the statue, a thickness of enamel that bubbles slightly in a ring at the center, where my finger is currently tapping.

Charlene is the first to get it. She gasps slightly, as I dig out the chisel that Monty left behind for me. With a couple taps, the glossy finish at the foot of the statue shatters away in a rain of grey glass. Underneath, there is a hole.

"It's been opened?" Doofenshmirtz says, leaning over the table for a better look. "After I stole it?"

"No," Charlene says, slowly, "before. Before Casablanca."

I set down the chisel and watch them.

" _You_!" Rodney shrieks, whirling on Charlene, "This is your fault! You and your _informants_! You tipped them off in Africa and they got the drop on us!"

Charlene sucks her teeth. "I'm not so sure," she says.

Dr. D has gotten up from his seat and slid over to the counter. I wave a hand at the gnome, inviting him to examine it. He takes it in his hands, weighing it and tapping it, flipping over shards of glass where they lie beside my kitchen knives. His expression is almost comically serious, his tongue pinned between his teeth.

"You know I never really thought there was anything inside of it," he tells me, squinting up into the darkness inside the hollow body. "I figured it was, like, full of good stinklekrampen or something. Loaded with medieval juju. Just knowing how the old country is, I mean."

Underneath the enamel, it seems to be made of some kind of ancient hardwood. I don't claim to know anything about ancient antiquities, but judging from the eerie look of the thing—I'm inclined to agree with Dr. D. It's just possible that Charlene was a bit too modern and shrewd for her own good. I'm still not certain that the thing of legend even properly existed.

I pause at the sound of the buzzer going off again. Who could that be? Rodney and Charlene are busy pointing fingers at each other, Doofenshmirtz is standing next to me, holding a statue up to his ear, and Chloe is waiting at the edge of the room for someone to give her a directive. There's no one left.

I slip gingerly through the hubbub and get the door. Outside, there's Andersmith and his less enthusiastic partner, both of them looking like trouble in their coats and scowls.

"We got a warrant," the partner says, pretty neutrally.

"So you better open up," Andersmith says, with a smirk that isn't neutral at all.

I sigh, but the law is the law. I let them in.

Inside, the argument has devolved into a three way finger pointing, accusation-slinging ruckus. Andersmith's partner clears his throat, causing all of them to freeze on the spot—Dr. D pauses with the pointy cap of the statue jabbing into Rodney's chest. It's a very strange tableau.

"Having a party, Detective?" Andersmith asks.

I nod, slowly.

"Hey," his partner says, "aren't you the lady what filed the stolen object report?"

Oh no, this is exactly the kind of outside complication I didn't want to get mixed up in. The burning baton is up in the air now, and there's no telling where it's going to land. If she pins me with it, I don't know that even Lawrence will be able to talk me out of the clink.

Charlene looks from the officer to the statuette in her ex-husband's hand, and for a moment I'm half convinced she's about the shoot them both for their trouble. But all she does is smile, blandly, and give a little wave. "Yes," she says, "that was me."

Slowly but surely, everyone's attention drifts to land on the gnome which Doofenshmirtz is still holding.

"Is this the dingus?" the officer asks her.

Charlene meets my eye. I've given her a lot of trouble these last couple days, and I think it's pretty clear that I've got a soft spot for her ex—she's plenty clever enough to have noticed, and I haven't been trying to hide it. On the other hand, in the last couple days Rodney and Dr. D both tried to cheat her out of her hard, if unlawful, work.

She winks. "This is the thing," she says, plucking the gnome out of Doofenshmirtz's grip. "It's been a lot of trouble for such a little thing, hasn't it?"

"Well that's all fine and good," Andersmith says, clearly eager to get back to his own investigation. "But we have a warrant to search these premises for anything connected to the disappearance of one Detective Pablo Garcia, so you folks had better shove off."

"Garcia," Charlene says, with a studious expression that is almost certainly insincere, "isn't he your partner, Detective?"

I nod.

"Yes," Charlene says, "of course. I hired him to track this little oddity down a few days ago." She sets the gnome down on the table, flicking lint from its shiny cap, and turns back to the cops. "And as you can see, officers, here the oddity is. Detective Garcia isn't missing, gentlemen, he's just been working."

"He ought to have washed up somewhere by now," Rodney mutters under his breath, and receives an elbow to the sternum for his troubles.

Andersmith scowls. "How come he ain't been home then, miss?"

Charlene shrugs delicately. "Perhaps he has a lady on the side," she suggests. "In any case, I wouldn't worry about it. I'm sure he'll turn up tomorrow, just as fresh and smart as he was the other day."

The cops exchange a look. It seems like the possibility of a lady on the side is giving them some pause.

"Look, we still got a warrant," Andersmith says, at last. "So we're gonna search the place, like it or not. You folks can step outside if you like."

"I really should be going, anyway," Charlene says. She turns to Rodney, one dark brow quirked. "I believe we have unfinished business in Casablanca, don't we?"

"You _can't_ be serious."

"On the contrary," Charlene says, adjusting the veil of her hat, "I'm very serious. Perhaps you will be too, to the tune of fifteen percent, whatever it is we recover. I know a man who's good with a glassblower. We might stop and ask him a few friendly questions."

"Twenty percent," Rodney says, stalking after her.

"I don't think so," Charlene replies.

Chloe whirrs to life, as the two entrepreneurs spill out into the hall, negotiating all the way. I tip my hat to her. Wherever they all end up, I hope they keep the sand out of her gears.

At last, at the end of it all, it's just me and Dr. D standing outside my little apartment with our backs against the wall. He's sipping at his tea, looking mildly disgruntled by everything.

"Sooo," he says.

I glance back at him. I'm surprised he's still here—the wile is thwarted, the day is saved, and there's no profit left here to be had. Except for the cup of tea, I'm not sure what it is he's hanging around for.

"There's, uh," he starts, "there's supposed to be a floor show at the club. Since it's, y'know, _Friday_ and all. Personally I don't think it's all it's cracked up to be, but I could use a drink after… that. You wanna tag along?"

There goes my heart again, like an automobile shifting up into a racer's gear. I'd like to kiss him. I'd like to catch him by the hip and dip him, a tango-deep dip, the way they do in those clubs the Methodists won't let their ladies visit, and I'd like to kiss him. He's a crook and a weasel, and I don't doubt I've not seen the last of his troublemaking, but I guess he's _my_ trouble, now. For whatever that's worth.

I button up my coat and gently lift the mostly empty cup from his hands. I leave it on the floor, beside the door, and I take his hand.

Maybe I will kiss him. It depends on what kind of music they're playing down at the dance hall.


End file.
